To think the most fundamental problem with labelling calories...

[Lifeisgenerallyfun]

Is the fact it says recommended calories for women is 2000 per day For women and the calories are shown as a percentage of this.

Now I’m sure there’s some (probably outdated) science behind this but at 5 ft 3 and quite active my maintain calories is 1300-1400. So if I are the RDA I would be the size of a house in months unless I could burn the additional 700 calories a day.

Looking on here it seems a fairly common amount of calories to maintain for someone of my fairly average female height.

So AIBU to suggest that the first place to start educating people is to help them find out how many calories they should be eating, ie that chocolate bar is 1/6 of your RDA not 1/10

I agree - I'm tall, with a wide frame - hips and shoulders. I carry a lot of muscle in my legs. My frame conceals a lot of weight (I have visible abs and a 28" waist at 14st - need to lose a few to get there at the moment though!). A warrior type physique.

I've had petite friends compare their weight to mine in sheer disbelief. But they have narrower shoulders and hips as well as being much shorter.

I don't disagree but wanted to add to the conversation that some people need more, especially teens, whose requirements on average exceed adult averages. This is important for teen eating disordered boys and girls to be aware of.

2,000 calories a day is too much for me.

Did we all use to be taller, or something? I know we're fatter as a nation now, but did we all shrink height-wise? I feel like 2,000 is woefully inaccurate, or it was based on the majority of people being taller than we are now.

For me, it comes back to the question of what do we teach in schools? We teach maths, but so many people can't work out compound interest or how many calories they should be eating a day. I think some of our lessons could perhaps be more practical - we need better financial education and better food education.

I'm not in teaching, but when is the last time anyone reviewed what we are teaching our kids versus what we know they need to know to cope in the real world? If it was OK to rely on parents to teach their kids everything, we wouldn't have a school system and we wouldn't have social workers.

Not everyone can make the leap between school maths and real world maths, but the principles are the same - the teaching method just needs to encourage that type of thinking, and perhaps use relevant examples.

It’s more likely to be to do with us having been more active and living in colder houses.

I agree with TheCountessofFitzdotterel. Plus a lot of food nowadays is packed with sugars where they never used to be to make them more palatable.
We were much more active in the past, less sedentary jobs, less pre packaged foods, everything cooked with fats like lard and butter ( not overly swimming in the stuff i should add )which meant we actually ate less because we were fuller and the fact our bodies used fats as energy along with proteins meant we could do things for longer and not feel so lethargic. We also didn't snack. An apple or a pear if we were lucky when i was young!
I must admit, nowadays I'm guilty of quick foods and do try to cook homemade meals a lot of the time, but the advent of snacking and loads of different diets has confused the issue for a lot of people leading to unhealthy eating and faddy diets and the obesity crisis.

@theendoftheworldasweknowit Did we all use to be taller, or something?

The opposite, we all used to be shorter. Humans have increased in height as infant nutrition has improved.

In the old days though, if you wanted biscuits you had to buy the ingredients and make them, and food was more expensive. Now you can spend £1 and get 1,000 nutritionally void calories.

Did we all use to be taller, or something?

No, but people were generally far more active and didn't have as much access to processed foods. Less cars on the road, more people in manual jobs, people walked or cycled everywhere. No snack or fast food culture either.

In ant case, I thought it was 1800 recommended for the average woman, not 2000?

I'm not in teaching

No shit

"when was the last time anyone reviewed curriculums" --about 5 minutes ago. And then 20 minutes before that and at regular intervals of similar breaks for the 20 years I've been teaching. I don't entirely disagree that some subjects could be redesigned with a more "real world" approach, especially after age 14 but it simply isn't schools' job to teach all life skills. Most parents can't teach most academic subjects so schools do that. Its unfortunate that some parents can't or don't teach basic life skills but schools are not social work centres and we should not be used as a cure all for all the things the Gov are too spineless to blame poor parents for. Food tech in schools, where it still exists is beset by practical problems and budget cuts that make it almost impossible to deliver effectively.

Yes but people who think they eat 1,400 calories may not always be. They very often - exactly like myself - eat 1,400 Monday to Friday, meaning their overall total is higher when they go over on the weekend.

They may underestimate portions, don’t count alcohol, every bite or lick of food, every splash of oil (and why would you that would be tedious).

So 2,000 average is about right. Remember that’s average not what weight you may feel your best at.

On the subject of calories though - I'm always fascinated by what the women eat for lunch / tea on Call the Midwife. They are out cycling the borough all day and have 1/2 a scotch egg, a bit of lettuce and slice or two of ham. Anyone who goes for seconds is commented on. We are so used to stopping for "elevensies" which might have been a watery tea and a digestive. Now its a latte or cappachino with a syrup and a 500 cal muffin.

Yabu if you are only looking into your cal intake and nothin else

Average daily amounts includes Christmas, birthdays and any other feast. People think 2000 a day but not at Christmas.

"Now I’m sure there’s some (probably outdated) science behind this but at 5 ft 3 and quite active my maintain calories is 1300-1400
That seems incredibly low. If I do no exercise, only walk 5k ish, my maintenance will be 1600. With 15k steps walking fast, or a run, 40mns hiit, i'll get to 2,000."

It's difficult to do 15k steps on lockdown and working from home. My average's gone down from 13k to 6k in lockdown. My fitbit shows I need about 1400 calories even on my busiest days.

I think the responses to the Thread kind of prove my point though - a really wide variation on calories needed by different people, most people on this thread have worked out what they need to maintain with their body type, metabolism, activity levels and yes none is 1300-1400.

But it is obvious most people haven’t done this, I really don’t think people know how much variation there is.

All there is is a push to put calories on everything when this information is pretty useless if people don’t know how many calories they need to maintain. Some pub meals use my entire calories in one meal!

2000 calories is massive for a woman. It needs reducing. But I do think calories should be clearly shown on foods, I just ignore the percentage unless its massive.

@MaskingForIt @vanillandhoney You think it's our average activity level that has dropped and ruined the calculation? Perhaps. But I think the recommended amount of 2,000 should be updated, or possibly just scrapped altogether seeing as average is never going to work for everyone and some people seem to regard the 2,000 as gospel. I don't think 2,000 as a guideline is helping anyone. Perhaps we should be ditching the 2,000 on packaging and instead directing people to BMR calculators.

@Lifeisgenerallyfun I can only think of one high end restaurant that publishes calorie counts. Otherwise, it's just chains. Mostly unexciting ones. I know it would be a challenge for smaller places to come up with nutritional information, but I would love to see more details available. I'm not going to refuse a dish because it has a lot of calories in it, but if I knew (it's not always obvious) at least I would know how much I had to burn off!

I think labelling in supermarkets has improved ever since they brought in that traffic light system, but if more takeaways and restaurants published calorie estimates, that would be supremely helpful in getting people to think more about what they're putting into their bodies. A lot of people operate on the basis that if they don't know how many calories are in something, it has zero calories.

@HugeAckmansWife No one my age had any kind of food education, and their kids haven't had that in schools either where they are (not sure how much regional variation there is). I'm not expecting schools to teach children to become fully functioning adults who can go out into the real world without any other guidance/support, but they should equip children to want to seek out the important answers.